Citizens do not want nuclear power 1 . They know it is both
far too dangerous and far too expensive. Politicians want nuclear power because
they know it puts Power in their hands. This is exactly paralleled by
politicians embracing nuclear weapons. They think it gives them power and this
is what they want above all else. Citizens do not want nuclear weapons because
they know they are insanely dangerous and what they want is to live without the
threat of sudden and complete annihilation hanging over them and their children
at all times. As we will see there is a close relationship between the weapons
and the power in every sense of the word.

Politicians have different agendas to the people on these
issues. The remedy is for us to wise up, get organised and then instruct them
to do what we want - or join the job market.

The main objections to nuclear power are outlined below
under the following headings:

Nuclear power stations are
prohibitively dangerous

Nuclear power stations are
prohibitively expensive

Nuclear power stations use the same
technology as that required to manufacture nuclear weapons

The resulting nuclear waste will be
dangerous for thousands of years

Plant and waste deposit storage are
vulnerable to terrorist attack

Nuclear power stations epitomise the
centralisation of power

Poor countries are made dependent on
rich ones

These plants draw funds away from the
development of sustainable energy

The uranium fuel will become
increasingly scarce.

The support of nuclear power by
government results from special pleading lobbying by the industry.

These aspects are briefly expanded upon below.

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Nuclear power
stations are prohibitively dangerous

There have now been four grave
nuclear reactor accidents: Windscale in Britain in 1957 (the one that is never
mentioned), Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979, Chernobyl in the
Soviet Union in 1986, and now Fukushima. Each accident was unique, and each was
supposed to be impossible.

A recent book, Chernobyl: Consequences
of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment, concludes that, based
on records now available, some 985,000 people died between 1986 and 2004,
mainly of cancer, as a result of the Chernobyl accident.

Alice Slater, New York
representative of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, comments: "The tragic news
uncovered by comprehensive new research that almost one million people died in
the toxic aftermath of Chernobyl should be a wake-up call to people all over
the world to petition their governments to put a halt to the current
industry-driven 'nuclear renaissance.' Aided by a corrupt IAEA, the world has
been subjected to a massive cover-up and deception about the true damages
caused by Chernobyl."

At Fukushima we have the worst
industrial disaster ever. Three simultaneous ongoing complete meltdowns have
proven impossible to stop or contain since they started almost 2 years ago.
These meltdowns are still pouring radiation pollution across the Japanese
landscape.

International experts agree that
there will continue to be disastrous failures at nuclear power stations and
that this cannot be avoided 2 .

As Edward Teller, the great nuclear physicist, said, 'If you
[try to] construct something foolproof, there will always be a fool greater
than the proof,'

Nuclear power
stations are prohibitively expensive

Nuclear power stations are so expensive that they are never
built without substantial contribution to their costs from citizens in the form
of subsidies.

The UK government has said it will not subsidies new nuclear
power stations. However this seems to refer to the most overt form of subsidies
and not to "hidden " subsidies.

I had a consultancy practice in Landscape Architecture from which I have now retired. I am also a writer and painter.
I have become increasingly concerned at governments'continuing, and counterproductive, use of violence to solve conflicts. With (more...)